NOLA Day 3

Today started slow but we still did a lot. I didn’t want to wake up and still reeked of booze from the night before. But I did eventually get up and we were lucky enough to borrow some bikes from Carl.

Bikes

We biked over to the Brad Pitt Projects, which is where one of the major levee breaks occurred during/after hurricane Katrina. The area there was basically a shanty town (well no probably not quite that bad) but it was also next to the levee so when it broke everything was decimated. It was pretty crazy how the whole area was just completely leveled – only the foundations of houses remained. Apparently Brad Pitt threw a bunch of money towards getting a lot of houses rebuilt in a new fashioned way with solar panels and other conscious design elements. The houses looked cool/interesting but still kind of like trailer home shanties. We found the new levee and walked up to it. Hopefully it will withstand the next (inevitable) large hurricane.

Near the Levee

New Eco-Houses

We then went to Napoleon restaurant (or something like that). It was not especially impressive but not bad and also kind of fancy. We got gumbo, jambalaya, warm muffuleta and boudin, which is a type of cajun style sausage.

Boudin at Napoleon House

Muffalata & Jambalaya at Napoleon House

We walked around the French quarter for a while, exploring and such. Eventually we found a bakery/coffee shop we had seen before and we went in there for some cafes au lait and a chocolate filled croissant thing. They were satisfying and tasty. We then found a gelateria with Isle of Man flags and got more gelato than we planned on. It was also very tasty but the weather had turned chilly and the gelato made us even chillier. We went home for coats and naps.

Chocolate-Filled Pastry at Antoine's Annex

But then we realized we didn’t have time for naps because today was the 12th night which meant that there was going to be a Joan of Arc parade at 6pm, so we went out to see that. On the way we drank a Four Loko which was absolutely disgusting. We did not catch the parade. Also before all this happened we got a cigar from an old Israeli man who was nice to us and had a smoke shop. We explored some more, spent some time at Lafitte’s Blacksmith Bar and eventually made our way back to Frenchmen Street which we later decided is our favorite place in this whole city.

Linnzi Zaorski at a Jazz/Swing Club

The Famous Snug Harbor Jazz Club

Oh and on the way to Frenchmen we stopped by French Market Restaurant because I had a hankerin for some crab and we ate a good amount of crab and it was surprisingly spicy. Eating crab is fun but also kind of morbid and there actually isn’t that much meat in there considering the effort and price. Later I peed with the spice still on my hands and that was a regretful experience.

Spicy Blue Crabs

Back when we had just missed the parade we went to Felix’s for some raw oysters in a half shell. Those were pretty good and the place has their own sauce for oysters which includes white horseradish, some sort of hot sauce and ketchup. We loaded it up with horseradish, which tasted like wasabi. We devoured a whole dozen oysters there.

Oysters at Felix's

All day our beer of choice was pretty much Abita Amber, which comes from local Abita Springs.

We ended our night hopping between jazz clubs – 3 Muses, Snug Harbor, Spotted Cat and another one. All were good but we like Spotted Cat the most. Snug Harbor had a bunch of singers but also a jazzist who apparently plays with the Rolling Stones. At Spotted Cat there were crazy good swing dancers of who we could not get enough. I made many videos throughout the night, trying to capture all the good music and dancing.

Dancing at the Spotted Cat

When we left the jazz/swing clubs there was a band playing in the street and people crowded around and danced and it was really good. Also a bit earlier I saw Holly’s Tamales and got a red chili beef tamale from her. She also had jambalaya tamales, cream cheese & strawberry tamales and a few other delicious sounding types. The one I got was indeed tasty.

Eventually we went home because I was really really tired and Jess continued to croon over how good the swing dancers were. I decided that Frenchmen Street was a good reason to come back to New Orleans someday, although the good swing dancers will probably not be there again.